<p>1) Last set of interviews ain’t always bad. 
My kid was last at her school, too. </p>
<p>2) They sometimes have cancellations. (Even Mayo, but probably not many.) Maybe let them know that if they do, you might could swing it? But I’ll let someone closer to the fray chime in.</p>
<p>Wow Kristen, congratulations!</p>
<p>^I would not recommend it. You’ll be fine. You’ll have long weekend, Dec. 3 is Friday. and Dec. 6 is Monday, do not need to go back home in between, you will have another fall break. D. had 2 back to back (at the same place though), two days of about 8 hours, she thinks of them as breaks from classes.</p>
<p>Called both and asked. I have some scenarios to throw around and would definitely appreciate your input!</p>
<p>1) The earliest I could do both of these interviews are Northwestern on 12/3 and Mayo on 12/7. Since I have friends at both Northwestern and in Minnesota, I likely wouldn’t come back for the day or so in between. This would mean missing the maximum amount of school right before finals–although I do only have 2 finals, and I doubt either of them will be ridiculously hard. I am really tempted to just go ahead and do this, even though it will be a little crazy, because I’d like to be as early as possible with Northwestern and don’t have many options with Mayo.</p>
<p>2) I could move Northwestern to January, during winter break, and make it a fun long weekend with my Mom in Chicago. Then I could take the 12/3 date at Mayo and in doing so, have a little time to spend with some wonderful old friends who recently moved to MN. This would mean missing the shortest amount of school, but would also mean pushing back Northwestern. I think this would be more relaxing, which could be beneficial.</p>
<p>Basically, looks like I have to weigh finals/this semester’s GPA with having early interviews. Any thought on the impact pushing Northwestern back would have on my chances there?</p>
<p>Decided to put em together & do it back to back. Wish me luck!</p>
<p>^Way to go! Have fun, wish you luck!</p>
<p>Congrats kristin!! Awesome news! Northwestern may let you know their decision a couple of months after the interview, so it was a good idea not to push it back (i think)</p>
<p>I have had two weeks with a couple of back to back interviews each week and they are definitely doable. At my interview today, the interviewer did most of the talking. A lot of bragging about how great the particular school was. It was very conversational, but i really did not get asked any specific questions. (She did most of the talking). It would be interesting to see if this one turns into an acceptance or a rejection. I got the impression I was just being convinced “to attend”. </p>
<p>Can our psychic shed any light into this? lol ;)</p>
<p>MyO, I am actually puzzled by one thing that is related to what you just wrote. One SDNer recently wrote: If all or most of the interviews are so “friendly” and no hard questions asked (for example, the interviewer did most of the talking), how can they use the interview to distinguish one applicant from others? In the end, they still need to reject or wait-list, say, 50 to 70 percents of those who were interviewed.</p>
<p>Some said they use the interview to screen some applicants who are apparently unfit to be doctors (e.g. socially inept). But it is rumored (again, at SDN) there are about 5 to 10 percents of the applicants who may be screened out by this screening process. They still need to select a huge number of interviewees to reject. How do they do that? I am really puzzled.</p>
<p>During the last application cycle, one applicant (who turned to be very successful in his application) said, after he had been in several interviews, that he believed that, unless you say or do something really stupid, it is almost impossible for you to “fail” the interview. But how many percents of the interviewees will get the passing grade if the interview session is so friendly?</p>
<p>mcat2,
I have never been to Med. School Interviews myself (of course!). However, I have had many more interviews in my life than average employee in USA. I am currently at my job #9 and each of these positions took numerous interviews before I got it. According to what I hear from my D. and my own experience, interviews at any place for any reason are very much related. They are more or less checking of applicant’s personality and if his personality is a good fit for a place (specific school, company, team…). Tricky questions are not regular part of interview (unless they are part of specific technique to see your reaction to difficult question). I am almost 100% positive that there are no correct or incorrect answers to any easy or difficult questions. The most important is to remain cool still be yourself and answer according to your own understanding / opinion and have supporting points for your answer. Even if you are just listenning and not doing much talking, you are in front of your interviewer being watched / checked. That is how I feel based on my experience with numerous interviews. If you get rejection after interview, this does not mean that you are worse than somebody else, it means that you are not as good fit for this specific place as somebody else. I tend to think positive about rejections, at the end they usually lead for the right person/place fit which is good for applicant, since we all want to feel comfortable (fit) at our school or place of employment.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, Since you brought up the topic of the similarity of a job interview and a medical school interview, it is also interesting to find out what the differences are between these two kinds of interview.</p>
<p>I think there are at least two differences:</p>
<p>1) The number of applicants that are called in for interview are different. A medical school interview may invite, say, 700 to 900 applicants for interview, even when the number of “admission officers” are not many. I do not think a typical company will call in so many applicants for interview. A difference here is that, for many companies, they fly you in for an interview. They can not afford to fly in 700 to 900 applicants. (It does not mean there are not many applicants though.)
2) For a job interview, an applicant may be required to talk to almost all members in the hiring department and some key members (e…g., their managers) from other related departments, the hiring manager’s manager. The interview lasts more than half a day, and sometimes almost a whole day. For a medical school interview, the “real” interview session (excluding the info sesssion, e.g., the FA session, hospital/medical facility “tour”) is much shorter, and the applicant tends to talk to a couple of admission officers (including MS tudents in the admission committee.) This is because they have to interview so many applicants while their admission office is small.</p>
<p>In short, the job interview may be more detailed as compared to a medical school interview. Do you agree at this? (Just a guess here, maybe it is more similar to a residency interview or a MD-PhD interview?)</p>
<p>If you go into details, there are differences, of course. For one, companies are much more selective looking for specific set of skills and other variables. Job interviews vary from company to company also.<br>
However, at the highest level, purpose of any interview in most cases is to find the best person / organization combination. Some organisation place personality fit at higher priority over skill set. For example, once I was hired for position, that I had no idea what the name of position stand for. Name was mentioned only at interview. I did not have experience either. So, I asked during interview what letter in name stand for, what responsibilities are and I clearly stated that I do not have experience. When they mentioned salary, I asked for more. Guess what, I got it. It appeared, that there was no single person to learn from either, no training classes offered were offerred. I had learned everything from outside resources and was very successful. So, I have develped 2 very general rules that happened to be applicable to any interview. They were very applicable to my D’s interviews at Med. Schools when she applied to bs/md programs and was just 17. The rulles are:
<p>We have successfully used 1. for choosing my D’s HS and UG and planning to use it for choosing Med. School. D. has always used 2. successfully.</p>
<p>
This is a good point.</p>
<p>As MyO kind of hinted in his post, if you were not asked many questions (that is, the adcoms did most of the talking), how can you tell, after the interview, whether the medical school adcoms think you are fit? It is very natural the applicant will like to know the answer to this question. Like what is said at the end of an intro probability book “Lady Luck”: Does she like me, or doe she not like me? 
</p>
<p>At one of the interview, the interviewer (who is a doctor) told DS that he thinks DS will likely be a good doctor. Is it a good sign or he should not read too much into this comment?</p>
<p>Talking about the interview, DS has just completed one of his interviews today. He still needs to fly back though. I think this may be his “second to the last” interview, assuming that he will not get another invite from now on.</p>
<p>Please take anything you hear with a grain of salt. On my interviews I received all kinds of comments (“You’ll get into any school you want. I hope school xxx is at the top of your list”) and ended up being waitlisted. A lot of the time, the interviewer is simply being nice. Other times, the interviewer may actually like you but the decision is made by the committee, not the interviewer. Most likely, the committee already has some idea of who they’ll pick even BEFORE the interview. Hence, for most applicants, the interview doesn’t make a difference. 85% of interviewees will think they had a good, pleasant interview. But, the post-interview acceptance rate is not 85%. It’s 25-40% for most top med schools.</p>
<p>It’s the same on the wards. I’m currently on the pulmonology consult service in the hospital. I was walking with the pulmonology fellow the other day when we ran into the senior resident on the medical team I was just with (he was my main evaluator for the last 4-week block). He’s a chill, informal type of guy and said to the fellow “this guy is the man!” (referring to me) and then whispered loudly “honors” to the fellow. Do I think I got honors for the last block? Maybe, maybe not. But, I’m more inclined to believe that was a joke than an actual hint at anything. Often these people don’t realize the effect their words can have when it comes to misleading neurotic premeds/med students.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing your experience with us, norcalguy.</p>
<p>At his last interview, DS said a very high percentage of applicants who were interviewed on that day came from “well recognized” colleges (maybe a coincident for this round of interview). Most have very good stats, according to what the medical school posted on its twitter (they boasted the average stat of those interviewed up to that day is 3.8/37 or so.)</p>
<p>In the end, the medical schools can only admit about 40%-50% of those they interviewed – This is already an extremely good percentage. It is really not easy to tell who they are going to admit. There is almost no “shoo-in” for most applicants, unless the applicant has a special quality (a major award, etc.) that the medical school is looking for.</p>
<p>I also start to believe that, when a medical school claims they put a lot of emphasis on the diversity of the class (that is, what the applicant can bring to this class of medical school students), they really mean it. They may not want to admit too many applicants who are more or less the same. You just need some way to distinguish yourself, whatever it may be. I think DS is fully aware that he needs to be among the top X percents (whatever the X may be) among those whose background is very similar to his. Otherwise, his chance of getting acceptance there will be very limited – and then cross the fingers that at least some medical schools will be willing to take the top X percents of the applicants of this kind.</p>
<p>Yes, so far it is 50% for D.</p>
<p>D. got one more invite. One is still under review.</p>
<p>thank you MiamiDAP, mcat2 and norcalguy for your input! You guys are emphasizing exactly what I think goes on with the interview process.</p>
<p>norcalguy, i am definitely taking everything i hear during the interviews with a grain of salt. That is exactly the reason I brought up this topic. So far I have heard the following at different schools (and I quote):“I was really looking forward to meet you. You must come here!”, " You are going to get several acceptances but I do hope you end up with us", “At the end of the interview I always ask the applicants the question -what would you do if you don’t get into medical school, but in your case that question is completely irrelevant”… Then, the last interview where I was just being “sold” the whole research program of the school made me think that my suspicions may be true: that is,</p>
<ul>
<li>By the time you get interviewed, the Committee has “really” made the decision to accept you, or not. The interview may weed out the completely pathological personalities (although BU royally failed at it with the craigslist killer…), but otherwise, I do not believe that they can gather enough information within one or two hour sessions to reject 60-80% of the applicants they interview. And this really sucks! They should really interview a lot less applicants and not make us incur all these unnecessary expenses and be subject to all this anxiety and stress.</li>
</ul>
<p>However, they set the rules of the game so we have no choice but to play it. On that note, I just got an invite from Columbia (don’t they interview about 1000 students and accept about less than 300?). Somehow, I am a little bit less excited than I should be. But of course I am going! I have no acceptances yet.</p>
<p>^Congrats, MyO! I also have mixed feeling about D’s last invite. But she is going and all I can do is to hope for no snow while she is driving in December to one of the most snowy city.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP and MyO, Congrats!</p>
<p>MyO, C is a very good school at a nice location. It is definitely worth going, even when they invites like 1000 applicants.</p>
<p>I do not know how many applicants are invited for every school that DS went for an interview. The “best” one is 660 (the best here means the fewest invitees). The second best seems to be around 700-750. The worst one is about 1000. But the size of class is quite different.</p>
<p>Another factor is the caliber of the applicants the school invited and the number of acceptances. During the application cycle in one year, one SDNer went to a school for interview. Afterwords, he said the quality of the applicants interviewed on that day is so high that he feels that he is like a saleman of a cheap used car on that day. The way he said it is so funny so I still remember it :)</p>
<p>So, the number (of the invitees) alone does not tell everything. It appears to me that, if the school interviews on more days every week and it gives out the acceptances later (like in March), it tends to invite more applicants in the end. Also, maybe the rolling admission school tends to invite fewer applicants.</p>
<p>For many Texas public medical schools, I learned from SDN that the last interview happens before the mid of December and likely only one school has one interview session in January (but the application cycle starts about one month earlier there, in May instead of June.)</p>
<p>So here I sit, getting a little anxious about my upcoming interviews (2 weeks, a month, and a little more than a month away, respectively) and it’s like the interview gods are looking down on me. I know that I interview well (have never been told anything but that) and have at least a competitive candidacy at the 3 schools I’ve been invited to, but I must admit I was anxious about being nervous since I would be in a foreign environment for both Northwestern and Mayo.</p>
<p>Lo and behold, I’d completely forgotten that my next door neighbor for the entire time I was growing up is a resident at Northwestern. He and I are going to meet up beforehand–he’ll show me around, we’re going out to dinner, and will definitely discuss the interview process there. I have a feeling being with a familiar and trusted face will definitely help calm my nerves.</p>
<p>And I just found out today that my former swim coach (I swam in my neighborhood’s summer recreational league) is a resident at Mayo Clinic! He’s graciously invited me to stay with him for a day or two before my interview to show me around Mayo and Rochester, answer all my questions, and help me get ready too. I can only imagine this will also put me at ease–plus, I am really looking forward to catching up with an old friend/role model (he even went to my current university and to my university’s med school). </p>
<p>And as luck would have it, the oncologist I’ve been shadowing for years just stepped down as the chair of the med school admissions committee. Something tells me he’ll have a nice insight into the interviewing and selection process, and I am please he’s offered to give advice as well. </p>
<p>If you haven’t caught it by now, all of this is such a huge relief to me, and now I’m looking forward to my interviews even more! </p>
<p>I’d recommend your kiddos see if they can’t find any unexpected connections at the schools where they’re interviewing. It’s changed my attitude from being excited + a little anxious to being excited + eager to show them what I’ve got, and I do believe that attitude is everything in this game. I can’t imagine any of these friends would have any “say” in an eventual admissions decision, but hopefully the peace of mind they should provide will be helpful personally.</p>
<p>Still no word from any other schools. Guess I’ll just take it one day at a time :)</p>